The Greening of Homes
More Buyers, Builders Embracing Benefits of Homes with
Eco-Friendly Features
by Karen Mansfield, The Observer-Reporter
April 20, 2008
Let’s face it. We’re living in a world gone wild for green. Everything from grocery shopping to automobiles has a green option (think recyclable bags and hybrids).
The green movement also is gaining momentum in the homebuilding market, where customers are reaping the benefits: lower heating and cooling bills, better indoor air quality and a sense of environmental responsibility from leaving a smaller environmental footprint.
“Green building is the next level of building houses,” said green home builder Lewis Keith, owner of Keith Homes in Washington, who has been at the forefront of eco-friendly building for more than a decade. “I don’t think I’ve deliberately been especially environmentally conscious, but I think it’s the right thing to do. It’s a better home.”
Keith constructed the first five-star energy-efficient house in Western Pennsylvania, and the homes he is building in Sycamore Reserve, a 96-home conservation community on 120 acres in North Franklin Township, are models of energy efficiency.
“We’ve built about as low-impact a development as you can,” said Keith.
He is pulling out all the stops on a 3,600 square-foot single-level model, the Timbervine, which is expected to be completed sometime in May and will be certified under the National Association for Homebuilders’ new National Green Building Standard, the first such home in Southwestern Pennsylvania to achieve the designation.
The new standard requires builders to include features in seven categories: energy, water and resource efficiency; lot and site development; indoor environmental quality and homeowner education.
The Timbervine home uses innovative closed-cell foam insulation and highly insulating house wrap.
In addition, the floors are bamboo and natural slate and the carpeting is made of recycled materials; the rooms are painted with nontoxic paint; the windows are high efficiency; the mechanical system includes a tankless water heater; and the house sits atop a poured concrete foundation.
“You get a much quieter house, much better indoor air quality, and much lower utility bills. It’s a more comfortable house. It’s a better product for the consumer,” said Keith. “I’m excited about all this stuff.”
Buyers and builders are embracing green, and eco-building is entering the mainstream, says Callie Schmidt, spokeswoman for the National Association for Homebuilders.
Since 1995, about 800,000 homes have been certified as Energy Star homes. That number is expected to swell to 2 million by 2010.
“In the past, we’ve noticed in surveys that when customers were faced with granite countertops versus insulation, they might choose the bells and whistles versus the unseen things. That’s starting to change,” said Schmidt, noting consumers who said they are more likely to wait 5 to 7 years for payback on green products, versus 1 to 2 years.
Another recent NAHB survey indicated homeowners would pay an additional $8,900 for a certified green home.
A downside for consumers is price. A green home adds anywhere from 2 to 5 percent to the construction cost compared to a traditional model. For example, performance-wise, that closed-cell foam insulation wins hands-down. But it costs $1 per square foot for a one-inch piece with a spectacular R-7 insulation rating, while fiberglass runs 39 cents per square foot for a three-inch piece with an R-13 insulation rating.
Betsy West, a Realtor for Northwood Realty and president-elect of Washington-Greene Association of Realtors, said she has not had any homebuyers inquire about green homes.
“It honestly has never come up, although Pennsylvania traditionally is slow to embrace. It may be different in other suburbs and the city,” she said. “For many homebuyers, the bottom line is the cost. Give them an updated kitchen, or beautiful hardwood floors, and they’ll take that over spending money on invisible things. It comes down to price. What’s on the West Coast will be here in five or six years.”
Indeed, in environmentally conscious northern California, sales of a 76-unit green townhouse community with solar panels outpaced sales of non-green communities two to one.
The up-front investment in a green home pays off, argue Keith and other green builders, because homeowners start saving on their energy bill immediately.
The future homeowners of the Timbervine model, which is for sale, will save approximately 40 to 60 percent on annual utility bills, Keith estimates.
There are also a number of significant tax credits and cash incentives on a state and federal level that make it worthwhile for homeowners to build green.
As builders become more experienced and environmentally-friendly products become more available – the Keiths are switching from petroleum-based closed cell foam insulation to a soybean-based closed cell insulated foam – the cost to build a green home likely will decrease, said NAHB’s Schmidt, making it even more attractive to buyers.
For Keith, green building serves an important purpose: reducing dependence on foreign oil.
“The whole thing about energy efficiency is that anything any of us can do to lessen our dependency on foreign oil is important,” he said, noting residential construction accounts for about 23 percent of the nation’s energy use. “If we can cut that even in half, we can make a huge dent.”
The depressed market hasn’t impacted sales at Sycamore Reserve.
“We’re in a housing crisis, and we’re operating at just about peak capacity. People are not buying houses solely because they’re energy-efficient,” Keith said, referring to the beautiful floorplans. “It has to be a house they can see themselves living in with their family, and then you have to add the green features that are a real plus. We have a unique product in a unique neighborhood.”
